Grave of the Fireflies

Since the photo below would probably have revealed it anyway, I'll be upfront and acknowledge right now that this article does not contain even a single digression on fireflies. [In fact, I haven't even seen the movie to which the title alludes.] But I couldn't think of any clever titles about dead wasps, live wasps, or the act of killing wasps, so I was stuck with the best that popular/Japanese anime culture could provide, which in this case did not amount to much.

So...the city of Cerritos has been threatening to fine our family if we don't bring Uncle Bill's house into compliance with city planning codes. In fact, the City has even resorted to tactics my mother interpreted as intended to shame us, viz. they planted a wooden post in our front lawn, and attached to it a large notice sign declaring that the City had found the house in violation of said codes. Unfortunately for Cerritos, my mother is not so easily shamed, and laughed defiantly as she retold the story.

In our defense, the house really doesn't look bad at all; their main grievances were that front lawn needs to be reseeded (which we have taken care of), and that the house needs repainting. In response to this second complaint, I have to say this is really more a matter of personal aesthetics than anything else. Although I will concede that the color scheme is closer to 1976 [yay! the Bicentennial!] than to 2006, the paint job itself is not in need of retouching. The house was purchased in the 1970s, hence the color choices, but it has been repainted several times in the intervening years.

The problem (if one would term it as such) is that each time my uncle had the house repainted, he used the original palette, so although new, the paint has a slightly..."nostalgic" feel to it. It's not as though he used offensive or wildly outlandish colors that are driving down the property values of the surrounding properties; he stuck with what he knew—with the very colors that the City had approved when he first moved into his home. If anything, this incident serves to reveal the fickle, unpredictable nature of the bylaws of the city planning commission. How is one to select a nice color scheme for his house if what is acceptable one decade is reprehensible the next? The paint is neither cracking nor chipped; it still has a nice sheen somewhere between eggshell and satin on the paint-sheen scale. Objectively, I honestly do not think the house needs a touch up. While it may not match some of the dwellings in our housing track, it isn't an eyesore, and does not stand out enough to warrant shelling out the $4000-6000 needed to repaint it. But, what can you do? The city will eventually force us to dish out the money to change the color, and is threatening to fine us until we do. My sister and I have begun looking at paint swatches...

Which brings me to the wasps. What started out as a little colony of wasps that I didn't even notice until my sister pointed it out to me has multiplied into four colonies, a couple of which look very large and menacing. My mother said that the painters will refuse to paint over the nests; she has even suggested that no one would even agree to work on our house until the awnings have been completely purged of wasps.

After putting off the task for various reasons (some legitimate, and some otherwise), I finally got around to killing all offending creatures. It occurred to me that I could offer their bodies to my friend the spider, but as I used a very powerful insecticide to fell them, it seemed safer just to sweep up their bodies and deposit them in the trash can. I have provided a photo of their nests (old homes) and the mass grave (new home). More hapless victims of the arbitrary whims of Cerritos's building and property code manager. Shame.